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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28652721">unspoken</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kontent/pseuds/kontent'>kontent</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SEAL Team Week 2021 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>SEAL Team (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Clay Spenser's Grandparents, Clay is the Kid Brother to everyone on Bravo Team, Gen, References to Possible Childhood Trauma, Secrets, Team as Family, Triple Drabble</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 14:01:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>300</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28652721</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kontent/pseuds/kontent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Bravo Team has an unspoken agreement not to ask about Clay’s childhood.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bravo Team &amp; Clay Spenser</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>SEAL Team Week 2021 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2099829</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>unspoken</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Day 1 / Jan 17th: <i>Childhood</i></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Bravo Team has an unspoken agreement not to ask about Clay’s childhood. They’re all trained to notice patterns of strange behaviour, of<em> avoidance</em>. They’re all trained to make people tell them what they need to know, they’re trained to figure out if and what they are hiding. </p><p>Clay has walls built around that part of his life. His face goes carefully blank every time someone mentions him growing up with his grandparents. Like he shuts a door behind him, completely locking away something he doesn’t want them to know. </p><p>They’re not sure why. Brock thinks it might be trauma. That something about Clay’s childhood is broken, rotting from the inside, poisoning all of his memories, so he decided to lock it down, only keeping the parts that were useful. (The local dialects he learned, the way he learned to fit in in places where he was very clearly not local, the feeling of always being uprooted and finding his home in himself. Never trusting anyone, always expecting to be left.)</p><p>Ray thinks it might be the other way around. That Clay’s childhood is his holy grail, the only place in his mind where he’s at peace. He suspects Clay locked it up because he compartmentalizes, hides away anything from his childhood to keep the memories from being tainted by work. Because there are many parts of Clay (of all of them) that bear marks of it, that are stained with the evidence of a life filled with violence and fear, and maybe Clay is hiding an oasis in his mind because it’s the only one he’s ever known. </p><p>They don’t talk about it because they don’t have to. The way Clay guards his childhood memories like a treasure is evidence enough - some things are better left alone. For whatever reason.</p>
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